No Joke: The Onion Launches CitySearch Competitor

America’s Finest News Source has launched Decider, a local entertainment site that includes interviews, event information, and restaurant reviews. The site is initially launching with content for Chicago, with plans to support more cities over the next few months.

The site has a clean (albeit somewhat generic) interface, with integrated Google Maps pinpointing each reviewed restaurant and a calendar for upcoming events. In addition to regular editorial content, users will be allowed to post their own reviews and comments.

The Onion is playing it straight with Decider, so users shouldn’t go in expecting the satirical news stories that have become the newspaper’s trademark. Regular Onion readers will note that the paper has long included legitimate local reviews and event calendars as well as movie reviews (which can be found on sister site A.V Club).

Decider will be facing off with a number of sites, including CitySearch and Yelp, which both have large established user bases that will be hard to compete with. That said, Decider isn’t serving as a standalone business, and will do just fine as an extension to The Onion’s newspaper.